kind of woman who was likely to appeal to a man who was sexually
insecure and misogynistic. She was unchallenging, featherbrained,
feminine in all the traditional ways. She was luxury-loving, obsessed with
clothes and make-up, hopeless with money; she spoke in a little girl voice,
lied transparently and could burst into tears apparently at will.
Napoleon's own judgement is interesting: 'She was a woman to her
finger-tips. I really did love her but I had no respect for her.'
But what is often overlooked or forgotten by students of this ill
matched pair and analysts of this improbable marriage is that after
Vendemiaire Napoleon could have had almost any woman in Paris. So
why this one? Why a woman of mediocre looks and fading beauty? Some
have speculated that Napoleon was sexually inexperienced and needed
the reassurance of an older woman well versed in the arts of love. His
own words are often quoted: 'I was not insensible to women's charms but
I had hardly been spoiled by them. I was shy with them. Madame
Bonaparte was the first to give me confidence.' That could be construed
as referring to lack of sexual confidence, but it su ggests more strongly a
man in need of maternal feelings and training in social graces and savoir
faire. It is by no means so clear that Napoleon was the sexual novice this
theory requires him to be.
The Bonaparte clan were united in their dislike of Josephine. Lucien
referred to her contemptuously as an 'ageing Creole', and Letizia in
particular, who had wanted her son to marry Desiree, always hated
Josephine. The conventional view is that Letizia was enraged that
Josephine was of higher rank than she, that she had a chip on her
shoulder accordingly, and that her charming letter of friendship to her
daughter-in-law (dictated, some say, by Napoleon himself) masked a
vengeful fury. The shrewdest critics have seen that Letizia is important
to this story in a quite different sense. Dorothy Carrington wrote: 'Was
his marriage to Josephine, who combined all the traits of character Letizia
deplored, his masterpiece against the adored mother who had deceived
him?'
There are two aspects of Josephine that strike observers who have only
the most cursory knowledge of her: she was an older woman, and she was
habitually unfaithful. If we accept that Napoleon had a 'complex' about
Letizia, then it is interesting to note what C. G. Jung has to say about the
'mother complex' in general. 'If a young man loves a woman who could
almost be his mother, then it always has to do with a mother complex.
Such a union is sometimes quite fruitful for many years, particularly in the
case of artistic persons who have not fully matured. The woman in such a
case is helped by an almost biological instinct. She is hatching eggs. The
marcin
(Marcin)
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